Gorgias, a celebrated Greek sophist, born at Syracuse, in Sicily;
settled in Athens, a swashbuckler of a man, who attached himself to the
Eleatics (
q. v.), and especially Zeno, in order that by their
dialectic "he might demonstrate that nothing exists, or if something
exists, that it cannot be known, or if it can be known, that it cannot be
communicated"; his work bore characteristically enough the title "Of the
Non-Existent, or of Nature"!